Place mashed potatoes in a casserole dish, dot with butter and sprinkle with paprika.

Bake mashed potatoes for 25 minutes in a 350°F oven.

Sprinkle with Bacon Bits or crumpled bacon just before serving.

***These make ahead mashed potatoes can be refrigerated overnight in the casserole dish and reheated in the oven or microwave just before serving.

300 Best Potato Recipes: A Complete Cook's Guide: Potatoes are just about everyone’s favorite side dish. This book includes dozens of recipes, and ways to cook potatoes, for every part of a meal from breakfast through appetizer, main course, and even dessert.

Variations on Make Ahead Mashed Potatoes

Cheesy Mashed Potatoes: Add about 1 cup of shredded or grated cheese after mashing the potatoes. Parmesan, cheddar or mozzarella cheese are all good choices.

Garlic Mashed Potatoes: Add garlic cloves to the water when boiling the potatoes. Or roast a whole head of garlic and add the roasted garlic to taste to your mashed potatoes. If you don't have garlic cloves, add garlic powder to taste when mashing the potatoes.

Herbed Mashed Potatoes: Add dried herbs of your choice to the water while boiling the potatoes. To do this, place the herbs in cheese cloth or a tea strainer; remove when potatoes are done. Or you can mix fresh herbs directly into the mashed potatoes.

Use a medium sized, metal, ice cream scoop to place balls of mashed potatoes onto a cookie sheet. Place the potatoes, uncovered, in the freezer for 1-2 hours.

Remove the potato balls from the freezer and place them in freezer bags. We prefer one quart size freezer bags but use smaller or larger as you choose.

These store well for two to three months.

Thawing Your Frozen Mashed Potatoes Recipe: The mashed potatoes can be thawed in the refrigerator overnight or taken out right at dinner time to reheat. Heat them in the oven, on your stove top, or in your crock pot or microwave.

Plan on two or three potato balls per person. Heat them until they begin to soften, then re-mash them to finish cooking.

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300 Best Potato Recipes: A Complete Cook's Guide: Potatoes are just about everyone’s favorite side dish. This book includes dozens of recipes, and ways to cook potatoes, for every part of a meal from breakfast through appetizer, main course, and even dessert.

Your recipe will appear on a Web page exactly the way you enter it here. You can wrap a word in square brackets to make it appear bold. For example [my story] would show as my story on the Web page containing your story.

TIP: Since most people scan Web pages, include your best thoughts in your first paragraph.

If you have a photo of your recipe you can upload it here. (optional)[ ? ]

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